Credits

Description

Kenta Fukasaku, scripter of both BATTLE ROYALE films (and co-director of the second), director of YO-YO GIRL COP and son of legendary filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku, sees his considerable talents erupt into full radical bloom with X-CROSS, a crazy cool film that practically defies conventional description! Staying in an unfamiliar resort town, Shiyori (Nao Matsushita) hears a stranger’s cell phone ring. She doesn’t know who the phone belongs to, but answers it. “Get out of there! They’ll cut off your leg!” The phone drops its signal into silence and Shiyori freaks the hell out. Who was the message meant for? A person staying here? Are the “they” being referred to people that are around her right now? A downstairs door slams, Shiyori’s mouth drops in horror and the film itself freezes and reverses, past everything we just witnessed, to several days earlier. Shiyori is nursing a broken heart and desperately needs to get away from it all. She and her best friend Aiko (Ami Suzuki) drive out to a remote, not-on-many-maps town. They get there and find the townspeople are... a little strange. The wealth of scarecrows mounted high on crosses don’t make them feel any better about the place either. Discomfort turns to terror when it becomes clear that the entire village is wrought with inbred leg fetishists, hellbent on amputating women’s legs!

Seriously supercharged, staunchly eccentric and wildly entertaining, X-CROSS can almost be described as a Lynchian version ofWICKER MAN (not the one with the bees!) smash-filtered through RASHOMON and GOZU, but that wouldn’t do justice to how original a treat it is. Fukasaku uses mobile phone calls as an inspired device through which to rocket his story forward and backwards in time, giving us multiple points of view on events. As the film goes on, things get more and more outlandish, reaching a crescendo that will absolutely stun you. At once intense, freaky and very funny, X-CROSS is the film that announces Kenta Fukasaku as a major unique talent in Japan’s genre cinema cannon. Scripted by Tetsuya Ōishi, fresh off penning both DEATH NOTE films.